Author: Surfer Chick

As much as I would like to be at SIGGRAPH, one of the reasons to visit would be to see Lenovo’s latest launch of their Haswell-E Desktop Workstation series. One of the key elements to the workstation market in recent quarters is to develop a professional-grade system that can encompass all the critical industries that require horsepower under the desk: engineering, media, energy, medical, finance and others. These systems have to be verified with industry standards to even be considered by these markets, but also the shift to Haswell-E and DDR4 will be an all-important factor for those that rely on speed and performance. One of the issues that these system manufacturers have is to define themselves in the market – Lenovo is already a big player in many other PC-related industries, so listening to customers is all important when trying to develop market share.

The new ThinkStation P series will be based around the LGA2011-3 socket, using Xeon processors and high capacity DDR4 memory. Given the nature of the platform, we can assume that the DDR4 will be ECC by default. For GPU Compute Quadro is being used, with the top line P900 model supporting dual Xeons alongside up to three Quadro K6000 graphics cards and up to 14 storage devices. All the P series will be certified to work on all key ISV applications, and via Intel they are quoted as supporting Thunderbolt 2, which should make for interesting reading regarding the PCIe lane distribution or PLX chip distribution depending if it is onboard or via an optional add-in-card.

In terms of that all important product differentiation, the P series will use ‘tri-channel cooling’ and air baffles to direct the cool air immediately to the component in question and then out of the chassis without touching other components. This essentially becomes a more integrated solution than the compartmentalized chassis we see in the consumer market, except when the company makes the whole system, the company can control the experience to a much tighter level.

The P series also runs a trio of ‘FLEX’ themed additions. The FLEX Bay is designed to support an optical drive or the FLEX module which can hold an ultraslim ODD, media reader or firewire hub. The FLEX Tray on the P900 allows each of the seven HDD trays to support either one 3.5” drive or two 2.5” drives, hence the fourteen drive support mentioned earlier. The FLEX Connector is a mezzanine card allowing users to add in storage related cards without sacrificing rear PCIe slots, meaning that this connector brings this extra card away from the other devices, presumably at right angles. Lenovo is also wanting to promote their tool-less power supply removal without having to adjust the cables on the P700 and P500, which suggests that the PSU connects into a daughter PCB with all the connectors pre-connected, allowing the PSU to be replaced easily.

Lenovo is also adorning their components with QR codes so if a user has an issue the code can be scanned such that the user will be directed to the specific webpage dealing with the component. The chassis will have integrated handles for easier movement or rack mounting. Lenovo is also promoting its diagnostic port, allowing the user to plug in an Android smartphone or tablet via USB for system analysis using the ThinkStation app.

Until Haswell-E and the motherboard chipsets are officially announced, Lenovo cannot unfortunately say more about the specifications regarding the series beyond memory capacities, DRAM support and power supply numbers, however they do seem confident in their ability to provide support and an experience to their ThinkStation users. We have been offered a review sample later in the year when we can test some of these features.

On Thursday August 7th, NVIDIA released their results for the second quarter of their fiscal year 2015. Year-over-year, they had an excellent quarter based on strong growth in the PC GPU market, Datacenter and Cloud (GRID), and mobile with the Tegra line.

GAAP Revenue for the quarter came in at $1.103 billion which is flat from Q1 2015, but up 13% from $977 million at the same time last year. Gross margin for Q2 was up both sequentially and year-over-year at 56.1%. Net income for the quarter came in at $128 million, down 6% from Q1 and up 33% from Q2 2014. These numbers resulted in diluted earnings per share of $0.22, down 8% from Q1 and up 38% from Q2 last year but beating analysts expectations.

Internet marketing is all about using current technology and trends to create a plan and outsmart the competition online. It takes lots of research and paying attention to what today’s audience is looking for in a particular niche to decide what goes into a strategy. Unfortunately, many marketers fall for “shiny object syndrome.” This means that they are attracted to new buzzwords, trends, and channels and feel that they must use them on their target audience. Here are some things to think about before adding these new concepts to your marketing plan.

While “shiny object syndrome” can be fun, exciting, and unexpected, the problem lies with the fact that the marketers that jump at a chance to use them don’t take time to see if these are things that the target audience is really interested in. Just the fact that they are new and “shiny” means that they are “hot” and should be used to blow away both the audience and their competitors. This can backfire on the marketer if it’s not interesting to the audience, or worse yet, it prevents them from getting the valuable information that they need. Readers will leave sites in a heartbeat if they can’t get the information that they need, no matter how “hip” the marketing is.

Consider your current business strategy before trying new concepts. Think about the problems that you are trying to solve, how you reach your customers, the number of visitors that use your information, your resources, and whether you are considered an expert. If these new concepts do not fit within each one of the goals that you have for these considerations, you chance having your marketing plan, and ultimately your audience, turn against you. On the flip side, if you don’t completely understand these considerations beforehand, the chances of the new concepts being added to your plan will most likely fail.

Do not use new tools just to use new tools. For example, just because a new social media site comes out does not mean that you have to jump on it right away. It may not even be appropriate for your target niche and when it comes to marketing, your time is precious. Don’t waste time on items that won’t help your business. Before you start adding anything new to your plan, you must make sure your current plan is already succeeding. Adding something new without understanding why your current one is failing will most likely still result in failure. Be sure everything is in place for success before you start adding and shuffling things around in your marketing plan. Be sure that whatever methods you decide to use are also appropriate for targeting your particular audience. For instance, you are targeting women of a certain age, make sure that whatever is in your strategy is appropriate for that audience.

As previously described, as an Internet marketer is is of utmost importance to not fall for “shiny object syndrome.” You are more than allowed to use new things in your strategy, but you must consider your current one, what you are trying to achieve with your plan overall, and if what you want to add or change is appropriate to your audience.

Online website hosting success stories are often riddled with powered by ausweb, half-truths, or even lies. It’s amazing the lengths people will go to in order to convince others that they are the real deal, a guru, the one to follow, so that they might part with some cash to buy their product.

Success stories like this annoy me, for they damped the real ecommerce success stories, and make people jaded. There are plenty of real people earning real money online just through hard work, yet these scammers will have the whole Internet doubted before too long.

In order to show people otherwise, I’ve decided to include a little success story of my own. This is not something that will wow many people, as the money is not huge. However, it demonstrates that there is legitimacy online, and will give hope to some of those who have online income aspirations of their own.

I just got back from a short trip to Thailand. I live in Asia myself, so it was easy to make a quick hop. I stayed in Bangkok (5 nights) and Phuket (3 nights). More on this later.

I started building websites and trying to make money through internet marketing about December 2012, and slowly over the first half of 2013 i have seen a bit of success and incomes increasing. In May I earned over $1,200 USD, which I felt was an incredible amount. A large part of that money came from a one-off sale of one of my early websites though, so I knew it wouldn’t necessarily always be that high.

One thing that has always attracted me to Internet Marketing was not these big, overnight income stories that are littered around, but more the ability to work from anywhere. I didn’t exactly want to spend my whole time in Thailand writing and working away, but I did take my laptop with me and check some stats, make some updates, and keep in the loop with my websites.

I thought it was pretty cool that I could go out exploring in the afternoon, then come home and write an article or two in the evening before I went to bed.

I made sure not to overdo it though. i focused on my holiday first, and just did a little bit of writing to keep momentum and consistency of my sites up. I didn’t spend a long time fretting about this or that, I just wrote a quick blog post for an hour or so and got on with my holiday.

Despite only writing one or two articles to each website once, or twice a week during my trip, I still managed to earn enough online to pay for my Phuket hotel (and a little left over).

I thought this was incredible, because it means that as I go forward with my online business, I will be able to increase this amount, hopefully to the point where I can work from anywhere, as long as I have a laptop and internet connection.

As you can see, this isn’t a huge “wow he is so successful” story, but it is a “look at the small things you can achieve and work to make them larger” story.

Internet marketing is a huge marketing opportunity for anyone to learn and master the principles involved. If an individual has a product that people want to buy, a well-placed advertising campaign on the Internet will pay dividends.

Everyone is on the Internet it seems and for a small fish to get noticed in the big sea of Internet marketers is a big proposition, seemingly difficult to overcome. There are, however some strategies that do overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

The key to developing a way to market a product through Internet marketing is to either make a decision to hire someone who is an expert in this area, or learn how to do this yourself. Hiring a firm can be expensive, and there is no guarantee that the results will be to your liking. Testimonials are as good as the person that says they are good and unless you can speak directly to the person that gives the testimony, they are pretty worthless.

So, if an individual is to take on this project him or herself, a learning curve must be overcome. Learning how to develop a website can be a bit intimidating, but a blog can be started immediately for nothing and the learning curve is small. Blogger.com is a good place to begin. They will walk anyone through the steps so they will be up and running very quickly.

Next, you need to find out where your market stands in comparison to the competition. The google keyword tool is your next stop in your Internet marketing adventure. This tool is free and will tell you what people are searching for on the search engines. Since most people use Google, that is a good benchmark to use.

So, lets say that your product is fishing lures. Go to the keyword tool and type in fishing lures. You will see how many people are looking for that term in a month. Probably quite a few. You will probably need to narrow your search term down to the point where you have a good number of lookers, and not too many websites that are competition. You might try some varieties of fishing lures such as deepwater lures, or night fishing lures for catching bass.

Once you find a keyword, or a keyword phrase that is being searched for from 30,000 times a month and up, and the competition shows weak, then you have a winner. Build your blog around that keyword phrase. Try to incorporate the keyword phrase into the url, the title of the blog and use in two to three times in the body of the description of your blog. It is likely that the blog will eventually rank well in Google.

This is the main technique in attempting to gain an organic rank on a major search engine. Now you can keep learning by discovering other key words that rank in a similar way and build blogs around those keywords. When you have several blogs pulling in traffic to sell your fishing lures, you might just have a good start on an Internet marketing business.